Well I'm Irish but it was when I left school I started to love and use Irish - and I have/have not started Gaelic and Manx as I have tried to avoid them like Old Irish as if they were the plague as not to distract and confuse me from my Irish that I was doing in college. As I had no grammar, just a decent grasp of verbs and a lot of words but no real knowledge of Irish really so I really had to work with it.

Interested in Celtic Languages and all things Celtic visit the (new) forum below, if you want.

jan.zajec wrote:Does Irish have T-V distinction? I mean informal and formal register (like tu and vous in french)? Is it OK to say "go raibh maith agat" to any person or should I say "go raibh maith agaibh"?

Nope, this is obsolete in contemporary Irish. In earlier usage, the plural of deference was used with priests, but I don't know of any living speakers who still speak that way.

The situation is different in Scottish Gaelic, where a general T-V distinction still exists.

anna wrote:Go for it Jan, and good luck! I shouldn't think there would be too much trouble with learning a P-Celtic and a Q-Celtic language together, as they are so different. I am a Welsh speaker but have absolutely no idea what Irish speakers are saying (when they speak Irish at least!)

Welsh, Cornish, Breton are the P-Celtic languages in your list, by the way, the others are Q-Celtic.

If I were you, and you are as enthusiastic as that, I would start off with Welsh and Irish, as those are the two you will get most material for. Have you looked for stuff on the internet?

Thanks for posting this I'm learning Irish. Last time I tried this I wanted to create a conversation group aimed at learning Gaeilge together so we could revive the language. I think as many people here that are learning Celtic languages, and Gaeilge seems to be quite popular with us, we should do all we can to bring it back!

I haven't really have much exposure to any language other than Breton (and only through the song Gortoz a ran). And the only Scotts Gaelic I know is sgian dubh (black knife). Since apparently Breton and Gaeigle are pretty dissimilar, maybe I'll look into learning Breton!

Dillon D wrote:Thanks for posting this I'm learning Irish. Last time I tried this I wanted to create a conversation group aimed at learning Gaeilge together so we could revive the language.

Maybe the 80 000 or so native speakers of Irish (round up or down depending on your view of the census figures and whether you include fluent non-native speakers) wouldn't be too happy that you want to revive their language? It implies, to me at least, that Irish is dead. While Irish is not thriving as such, it's not dead yet, and it is a bit insulting to those who use Irish as their daily language to refer to it as such.

To me revive doesn't necessarily imply it's dead. I once made the very same mistake of referring to the "Gaelic revival" and got thoroughly shot down by the Irish learners here. What he meant is that Irish can returned to use in daily life for the majority of Irish people.

I admit that the tone of my post was rather harsh (and unnecessarily so), I certainly didn't intend to shoot down anyone. In fact, the opposite, I'd encourage anyone to learn of Irish. My point should have been not to forget that there are vibrant Irish speaking communities both in Ireland and outside, in reality and online. Personally I like the words of the 20 Year Strategy, to give all inspiration and support to the use of Irish. It is only semantics, but I think perception is important.